A Trailer Wrecked, A Long Trek, And Help Comes For Marine Veteran

Richard Kowalker with his horses at the funeral for Norman Varney June 20.

Richard Kowalker with his horses at the funeral for Norman Varney June 20. (Michael Klett/D'Esopo Funeral Home, hc)

CHRISTOPHER HOFFMANSpecial to The Courant

When his horse trailer was totaled in an accident, many people helped Marine Corps veteran Richard Kowalker

NEWINGTON — Richard Kowalker had brought his horse to more than 700 military funerals, but this one would be particularly special.

The deceased, Norman Varney, 90, was not only a fellow Marine, but also a survivor of the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, one of the greatest battles in Marine Corps history.

As he has done at military funerals since 2006, Kowalker, 66, would honor the fallen serviceman by leading a riderless horse, an ancient symbol of a fallen warrior, at the funeral procession.

"I feel it's an honor just to be in the presence of that person," said Kowalker, referring to Varney. Kowalker is a Vietnam War combat veteran. "What they had to go through, I can only imagine. I believe there's a reason they call it the Greatest Generation."

But the day before the June 20 funeral, Kowalker faced a big problem.

His horse trailer was totaled in an accident. When he couldn't borrow a replacement, he made a decision. At about 10 p.m., Kowalker put on his Marine Corps dress uniform, saddled up two horses and began an all-night trek from Middlefield to Wethersfield, about 15 miles away.

Michael Klett, hc

Richard Kowalker with his horses at the funeral for Norman Varney June 20.

Richard Kowalker with his horses at the funeral for Norman Varney June 20. (Michael Klett, hc)

"If the situation had been reversed, he would have done the same thing for me," he said.

Kowalker set off riding one horse and leading the other, both of them Morgans, through the dark up Jackson Hill Road in Middlefield to Route 66. He stopped at the Red Dog Saloon on Route 66, after being invited in for a drink, he said.

"They invited the horse in, too," he said.

After one drink, Kowalker mounted up again and continued, just him and two horses walking through the darkness. They clip-clopped past homes where everyone was asleep, down Higby Road in Middletown, turning right at Moody School and then left onto Route 217 to Cromwell, There, he picked up Route 372 and then turned north onto Route 3.

Although there was little traffic, Kowalker admits he was concerned and brought along a supply of flashlights and batteries. But he had faith in his mounts.

"They are both very, very, very intelligent animals," he said. "That's what they do. They walk."

Kowalker was riding down Route 3 in Rocky Hill at about 7 a.m. when Ken Yavis, who works at the New York Pickle Deli, saw him go past. Yavis, who knows Kowalker and knows that he does military funerals, could tell something was off because he was in his dress uniform.

Yavis offered Kowalker the use of his horse trailer, and let him rest at his home before driving him the rest of the way to Wethersfield. He made it in time for the funeral.

But the problem of how to get to the next funeral — Kowalker did 115 last year — remained. His veterinarian, Stacey Golub, set up a crowdfunding page that has raised more than $4,000 toward a used trailer. That, combined with a matching donation from the Hoffman Auto Group and other contributions, was enough to get Kowalker over the top.

"It is my honor to be part of this initiative to assist a man who gives so much of himself to his fellow veterans," said I. Bradley Hoffman, co-chairman of the Hoffman Auto Group.

Yavis, meanwhile, talked to Turnpike Motors Autobody in Newington, which agreed to fix up and paint the trailer. The business will present it to Kowalker in a ceremony on Thursday.

"We're going to really do it up for him," Turnpike Motors Autobody Controller Marty Smith said. "It's really amazing what this guy does."

Kowalker doesn't quite know what to make of it all.

"I'm a little overwhelmed by all this," he said.

Kowalker's vocation comes from hard and painful experience. He grew up in Newington and joined the Marines at 17. Two years later, he was sent to Vietnam. There, he served as a machine gunner at the height of the war in 1968 and 1969, fighting in places with names like Hill 55, Sherwood Forrest and Happy Valley.

"There never were any happy incidents in Happy Valley," Kowalker said.

Kowalker came home, left the Marines for a series of low-paying jobs and then re-enlisted, serving as drill instructor in San Diego in the mid-1970s. He left the Corps again and became a security officer at the Long Lane School in Middletown.

As the 1970s ended, Kowalker began to experience severe post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms. He quit his job and headed to the woods of New Hampshire with his dog.

"I decided to grab my best friend and get out of Dodge," he said.

Kowalker stayed in the woods, living in a tent and only emerging from the wilderness to make quick money for supplies, for about 2 1/2 two and a half years. When the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in 1982, he said, he walked and hitchhiked to the ceremony.

Not long afterward, Kowalker entered a six-month PTSD treatment program and was declared 100 percent disabled.

The idea of attending military funerals came to Kowalker in the mid-2000s when he went to the funeral of a Vietnam veteran he did not know and whose body had only just been identified and brought home. In the receiving line, he realized that he could say nothing to comfort the family. Then he remembered President John F. Kennedy's funeral and the riderless horse that accompanied his coffin.

"That's when the seed was planted," Kowalker said.

Without money and never having been on a horse, he convinced a horse owner in Middlefield to give him lessons. She later sold him his beloved horse Melody, who serves as the riderless horse, for far less than she was worth, he said.

Kowalker lost 40 pounds, shaved his beard, cut his long hair, put on his Marine dress uniform and did his first military funeral on Jan. 6, 2006. He's up to 709. With his new horse trailer, he has no plans to stop any time soon.